IPMS SPASM, Regional, 9 June 2007, Ottawa, IL
This year, the Region 5 event was held by IPMS SPASM in Ottawa, IL. This is the first of their events I've attended in probably 8 years of solid contest attendance and I wonder why they've not done more events.
For various reasons, I did not enter this event, but can give you some idea of a few things I did not experience via e-mails from others who did enter models.
The group had all of the details of dates/times/fees/directions/entry forms on their website (which has since disappeared from the IPMS/USA website). Entry was $25 for all the models you cared to enter and some took full advantage of that as I overheard one contestant state he brought 19 entries. Walk-ins were charged $5. Seems rather high to some, but when one considers the cost of rental of the facility (which was the Knights of Columbus lodge in downtown Ottawa) and getting awards for 80 some categories, the cost seems more reasonable.
Registration seemed to go smooth for those who entered, but there were comments that with only two people handling registrations, it could have gotten congested quickly. There were reported to be 100 entrants with over 450 models on the tables.
The main contest hall was fairly well lit with some tables being on risers, though not all. This room was lined with vendors and when judging commenced, the contest tables were blocked off with police 'do not cross' tape. The other vendor room was very dimly lit and quite crowded. This was the bar area of the Lodge. Apparently an additional vendor or two was added to this room, making for crowding. In truth, there were a huge number of vendors and considering the number of people in attendance, I'd bet few really did well as there are only a finite number of dollars to spread around. I'm not sure if the contest coordinators thought of that or even cared. Since they don't do an annual event, they may have felt they needed to get what they could from this one event, but I am just speculating.
The venue offered places to sit in the entranceway and some at the bar area. There were no refreshments until the bar opened at 11-12. I saw no water fountain on the premises. The prices for sodas when they were available was 75 cents a can. Quite a few were partaking of the beer and mixed drinks as well once the bar opened.
As the venue was downtown near the river, there were plenty of places to eat. The lodge's parking spaces were quickly filled, but more were available farther on down the street at a public parking area so no problems in that respect, especially as it was a lovely day.
Every good show has a raffle and this one was no exception with tickets going for a dollar apiece and 6 for $5. There were tickets attached to the awards and the winner blindly dug through a box to pick their award. Awards were nice ones and I think most won something.
The awards ceremony got underway at 4PM from what I was told, with the 2nd and 3rd place awards put on the table. The first place winner walked up to get his/her award with the other two places being announced. Seems it was over by 5PM.
I mentioned that I did not enter. There were two reasons. One was the $25.00 entry fee, which I thought a bit high, but had I the funds, I'd have spent it. Second was that originally the judging would start at 2PM and the awards ceremony was not set to start until after 6PM. As I'd gotten no guarantees that it would be done earlier, I did not chance being stuck there until late and not getting home until midnight or so. It is good that it turned out better, but the host club lost the entry income from at least two if not more modelers and the opportunity to fill more of their categories.
As it was, we left at 2:30 PM and got home at a most reasonable hour for a change.
Couple of general comments. First is that for my car, it was basically $60.00 in gasoline alone for the trip and that was not a full tank either way. Secondly, from talking to vendors and others, it seems that there were few people attending the event on Friday. In my experience over the past 8 years of attending events, one generally does not need two days for a regional. I can, however, see that often a club has the venue for two days anyway so why not use it. I heard grumblings from some vendors about having to be there so early on Friday to set up. These folks could have set up Friday evening, giving them one less day to spend on hotel/meals. Often the difference between being profitable for them or not is the $100 a day it generally costs to be in a city of any size. Third is that I saw one modeler constantly pointing out his entries to one of the judges and the judge made no attempt to stop this fellow. To me, that is just not the way to do things. That judge should have warned the fellow and if he persisted, to tell him to remove his entries and go home. I don't see this often as rarely do judges wear name tags, but it was quite apparent this time.
Overall, it was an event that I enjoyed. I saw a lot of friends that I see only during these events, there were a lot of very nicely done models, the vendors had good stuff, though only one got any of my money and not much at that (my fault as June is an expensive month for me with property taxes due), and the folks at SPASM are just plain nice people (as are just about all modelers, so that is no surprise).
I encourage them to hold more invitationals. Ottawa IL is a very nice town and easy to find, so I'm hoping more is to come.
Any commentaries can be directed either via e-mail or on the forum for additional discussion.